Obama announces resignation of chief of staff

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama, accom­pa­nied by White House Chief of Staff William Daley, announces Daley is leav­ing and cur­rent Bud­get Direc­tor Jack Lew will take over as chief of staff Mon­day in the State Din­ing Room at the White House in Wash­ing­ton. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Susan Walsh)

BEN FELLER

AP White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama announced unex­pect­edly on Mon­day that chief of staff William Daley was quit­ting and head­ing home, cap­ping a short and rocky tenure that had been expected to last until Elec­tion Day in November.

Obama bud­get direc­tor Jack Lew, a fig­ure long famil­iar with Washington’s ways, is to take over one of the most con­sum­ing jobs in America.

Daley’s run as Obama’s chief man­ager and gate­keeper lasted only a year. It was filled with con­se­quen­tial moments for the White House, like the killing of al-Qaida ter­ror­ist leader Osama bin Laden, but also stum­bles with Con­gress and grum­bles that Daley was not the right choice to coor­di­nate an intense oper­a­tion of ideas, egos and decisions.

Obama said he reluc­tantly accepted the news and at first had refused to accept Daley’s post-holidays res­ig­na­tion let­ter last week.

Daley did not waver, express­ing to his boss a desire to get back to his fam­ily in Chicago, where Daleys have dom­i­nated local pol­i­tics for decades. He offered no expla­na­tion on Mon­day about what accel­er­ated his deci­sion; he had com­mit­ted to Obama that he would stay on through the election.

It appar­ently became clear that the fit was no longer work­ing for either side. Senior adviser Pete Rouse already had taken on more of the day-to-day management.

Step­ping in is the mild-mannered Lew, who began his career as a staffer in Con­gress, where he spent almost a decade as prin­ci­pal domes­tic pol­icy adviser to House Speaker Tip O’Neill. Lew has worked for Obama as a deputy sec­re­tary of state before becom­ing bud­get direc­tor, the same posi­tion he held in the Pres­i­dent Bill Clinton’s administration.

Daley had been brought in for his polit­i­cal savvy, busi­ness ties and expe­ri­ence as Com­merce sec­re­tary. Yet as an out­sider, despite his back­ground with the top polit­i­cal fam­ily in Chicago, Obama’s home­town, Daley did not per­son­ally know Obama well. That meant he had to fig­ure out the pres­i­dent and run his oper­a­tion simul­ta­ne­ously. He did not seem to mesh as the one, more than any­one, charged with ensur­ing a smooth operation.

The pres­i­dent deliv­ered the other side of the story, describ­ing Daley as highly influ­en­tial and effective.

“No one in my admin­is­tra­tion has had to make more impor­tant deci­sions more quickly than Bill. And that’s why I think this deci­sion was dif­fi­cult for me,” Obama said in a State Din­ing Room that was nearly empty except for the assem­bled media.

The mood was decid­edly more low-key than other tran­si­tions involv­ing the top staff job at the White House.

Obama now plows ahead in an elec­tion year with his third chief of staff — one of the most cru­cial posi­tions in the U.S. gov­ern­ment and national pol­i­tics. Daley had replaced the col­or­ful and involved-in-everything Rahm Emanuel, who left the job to run for Chicago mayor, a posi­tion he now holds. Rouse also served as interim chief of staff for a stretch.

Those fol­low­ing Wash­ing­ton pol­i­tics had seen this day com­ing, espe­cially since Rouse took on more of Daley’s tra­di­tional role in Novem­ber. Although Obama praised Daley at length for his help on major deci­sions in 2011, the West Wing pres­i­den­tial sec­tion had endured pri­vate strug­gles with coor­di­na­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, par­tic­u­larly with Congress.

Daley was not pushed out the door, said a Demo­c­ra­tic strate­gist famil­iar with the deci­sion The tim­ing was dri­ven by Daley’s per­sonal reflec­tion, yet it also would have become more awk­ward for the White House had he not left before Obama’s tone-setting State of the Union, said the strate­gist, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity to dis­cuss the per­son­nel matter.

The State of the Union speech is Jan. 24, fol­lowed closely by the release of his White House bud­get pro­posal in early Feb­ru­ary. The chief-of-staff tran­si­tion is expected by the end of the month, with Lew stay­ing on at the Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get until the bud­get plan is released. It is unclear who will lead the agency after that.

Lew and Daley stood with the pres­i­dent on Wednes­day but did not speak. The White House said nei­ther man was giv­ing interviews.

Lew’s pri­vate sec­tor expe­ri­ence includes a stint as man­ag­ing direc­tor and chief oper­at­ing offi­cer of Citigroup’s global wealth man­age­ment division.

Daley, mean­while, will serve as co-chairman of Obama’s Chicago-based re-election efforts, said a cam­paign offi­cial, who requested anonymity ahead of the offi­cial announcement.

Unlike Daley, Lew comes with deep con­nec­tions to Con­gress, where Obama’s rela­tion­ship with law­mak­ers is a source of con­stant debate.

Com­ing after Emanuel, a for­mer con­gress­man and a leader of his Demo­c­ra­tic Party cau­cus, Daley’s rela­tion­ship with con­gres­sional Democ­rats was hardly smooth.

Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Harry Reid, the top Demo­c­rat in Con­gress, sent out an upbeat state­ment on Lew (“a con­sum­mate pro­fes­sional with inti­mate knowl­edge of Con­gress”) and Daley (for “han­dling crises few chiefs of staff have had to face.”)

Posted by AP News on Jan 9 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.